[Our new government’s] foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth … It is indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator [presumably as indicated by Scripture]. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of his ordinances, or to question them. For his own purposes, he has made one race to differ from another, and has made “one star to differ from another in glory.”
Vice-President of the Confederate States of America, speech delivered in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861, reported in the National Intelligencer, April 2, 1861